A Church in the Country | John Foulcher

A poem for those in rural ministry at this vital time of year.

Outside the church, farmers strut
among wives and children,
bartering news of the wheatcrop. Six months ago,
all prayer was for rain.
Now, every hole in the cloud
brings hope for a dry harvest.

From the arched brick darkness, an organ simmers.
We go in, sit among pews
polished with shadow.
The children have gone to Sunday School. Wives and husbands
are alone here,
as they were at their weddings.

The minister mounts the altar
as a rodeo rider would steel himself for the wildest steer –
he waits for the old women
in web-thin floral dresses, and the old men
who cling to the pews
as if they were days.

And the last to come:
a woman in a wheelchair, her legs
like roots pulled carelessly from the ground,
her head dug from her shoulders
like a withered bulb;
a boy in callipers, stumbling through each moment of his being
crippled, the thud of his huge stone shoes
in the thin stream of carpet
down the aisle.

The organ comes to the boil. We stand for the first hymn.

Outside there is the sound of a car
skimming on the road.
There are seeds of rain on the shingles.